I met my first watermelon salad at The Covington restaurant in Edgartown, Massachusetts. The dish consisted of watermelon cubes tossed into a pile of salad greens, alongside turnip shavings, pickled scapes, feta cheese, and balsamic vinegar. The juicy red chunks did the job normally reserved for tomatoes and availed themselves beautifully. Their sweet acids bent the salad around them, and a leafy salad with watermelon morphed into watermelon salad with leaves. Refreshing and sweet, the salad seemed to make me hungrier the more I ate.
A few minutes later in the hotel lobby, I gushed about the joys of watermelon in salad to anyone who would listen. A receptionist named Shania was not impressed. “We put that stuff in salad all the time.” She’s from the hills of Jamaica, a land of year-round gardens and daily salads. She spoke with authority on vegetables but didn’t dwell in specifics. “If it can grow in the backyard, it’s going in,” Shania said, when I asked her what else goes into a Jamaican watermelon salad. The only ingredient she named as unfit for watermelon salad are tomatoes. They can be too bossy, she explained, and take over the flavor. As for the watermelon, the only guidance she offered was to cut the chunks small. “If the pieces are too big, people will pick them out and eat them.”…